Are You Doing Enough to Gain Conversions?

How can we get more business online? A question that business owners of all sizes have asked themselves over and over again. The truth is there are a number of factors that play a part in improving this elusive statistic.

If you’ve successfully managed to encourage customers to click through to your site, all your hard work could fall through if your website is then unresponsive, slow or just plain unusable. Whether it’s inquiries or sales you’re looking for, ensuring that your website is up to scratch is hugely important.

Here is our guide to understanding conversions and most importantly, how to increase them.

What is a Conversion?

To gain a greater understanding of how to increase conversions, you first must understand what a conversion is…

A conversion is a specific action you want a customer to complete when browsing your website.

Most people assume a conversion is a purchase or completing an order. But in fact, conversions can take many forms. Typically, the most common conversions marketers are looking for are:

  • Signing up to a newsletter or email marketing
  • Creating an account
  • Sharing content via social media
  • Entering a competition
  • Installing an app
  • Rate a product or service
  • View a related product
  • Requesting more information
  • Visiting a specific page
  • Voting
  • Feedback
  • Purchasing

As you can see from the list, conversions are individually related to specific actions. So, one solution for all approach simply won’t work! Whatever your required conversion is, your marketing plan should reflect this.

What are the Stats on Conversions?

Clients have often asked us ‘What is a good conversion rate?’ and the truth is ‘it varies!’. Depending on what industry you’re in, the statistics will vary of both higher and lower figures.

For example, an online store selling the latest t-shirt designs attracting customers via email and social media promotions is going to have a greater conversion rate than a store selling t-shirts for £10 with no promotions.

So sometimes conversion rates can be misleading! However, this variation of data does not mean you should not do everything you can to increase your conversions.

In marketing terms, we signify conversions by a % of visitors that turn into customers. This is often referred to as the average conversion rate.

In 2018, a marketing study was conducted using 300 websites from different industries to determine what the UK average conversion rate was between Q4 2014 and Q3 2018.

Putting conversion rates into perspective, in quarter 4 of 2014, the UK average conversion rate was 3.65%. By Q3 of 2018 the average had only increased to 4.04%. During that time the highest recording being 5.01%.

What Factors can influence or effect Conversions?

There are multiple variables that can affect conversion rates, some of which we have listed below:

  • Product/ service type
  • Cost of product/ service
  • Where your traffic comes from
  • Device
  • Design (responsive, mobile-friendly, navigation)
  • Customer service
  • Usability
  • Platform
  • Locations

What would Encourage a Customer to Convert?

Well, we’ve asked the question, what factors can affect a customer converting?

But what do customers actually want? Below we found out exactly that…

  1. Personalisation: A general comment we hear is can we see everything at once. Hidden content is a big put off for potential customers, nobody has the time or patience to scroll through 10 pages of 50 products looking for what they want. Your website should provide a wide selection of information that can be found easily. Utilising filters, search bars and categories can greatly improve the navigation and usability of your site.
  2. Responsiveness: It’s a fact, websites which work well across all platforms get better conversions. Although in 2019 mobile conversions are low, experts reckon that by the 2020’s 50% of e-commerce purchases will take place via mobile devices, so making sure that your website displays and functions well across multiple devices is an absolute must.
  3. SEO: This is not just clever Google tricking tactics. SEO can have a huge impact on your conversion rate. Meta descriptions in particular can influence your click through rate and with so few characters to work with, ensuring that you engage the reader is hugely important. There’s also a whole host of other factors to consider such as html optimisation, speed optimisation, and the content itself! Ensuring that your site is well optimised can help you to rank higher in the search results, increasing your click through rate and potential conversions.
  4. Fast Service: In the modern day, people want to be able to find answers and solutions quickly and easily. In fact, if a website takes more than 3 seconds to load the average user will generally bounce. Ensuring that your website performs well in terms of speed is definitely a priority. In fact as of July 2018, Google actually included speed as a ranking factor to enhance user experiences.
  5. Customer Service: Links, phone numbers, emails, social media, video, chat functions and other helpful features should be across all pages and most importantly, they should be easily visible and accessible – especially if your conversion rate is determined by enquiries.
  6. Product Data: If you are running an eCommerce site, a complete and comprehensive list of your product or service features is a must. Fill your customer full of confidence so that there is zero ambiguity about what they’re looking at. Clarity is key! After all, if a customer is unsure, they could go elsewhere.
  7. Targeted Content: If you’re struggling to convince your customers to make that purchase, make sure they remember you elsewhere. Target your customers with content they have viewed with targeted ads. However be sure to get the balance right as too much will put them off, it is vital you strike the right balance.

So, Are You Doing Enough to Gain Conversions?

The world of online marketing is changing all the time and it can be hard for those in the industry, never mind those who run and/ or operate a business to keep up. The good news is that Netbiz can help!

To date, we’ve helped over 500 businesses with their online presence and accessibility and we’re always looking to increase that number. Over the last 14 years, our team of web experts have helped clients from a variety of backgrounds and industries with those all-important conversions.

If anything you have read in the piece above resonates with you and you think ‘I can do more…’ then arrange a sit down with a member of our team. We are the Midland’s number one agency and we’d love to review your website over a brew and a biscuit.

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